December 29, 2005

from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded

Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And welcome to The Dividing Line on a

Thursday afternoon. Feels like we were just here because we were yesterday, in fact, and we continue where we left off yesterday.

We have been listening to a couple of different things, specifically listening to Bart Ehrman's NPR.

I got an interesting email, someone, I guess a defender of Ehrman or someone who buys into his spin on textual issues, something along that.

I'm not exactly sure what the story is. But anyway, I didn't like that I felt that Ehrman seems to claim an ability to mind read dead people.

But the fact of the matter is when he continually uses loaded terms and loaded language to say that this scribe changed this and changed that, then he is assuming that there is a purposefulness in regards to what the scribe did and that he can somehow know what their intentions were.

You can't know those intentions. You can theorize about things, I suppose. But when you speak with certainty as to such things, then you are, in fact, claiming to have the ability to know exactly what a person intended.

And in the vast majority of instances, especially in ancient manuscripts, the scribes do not give us little notes and say, by the way,

I did this, that or the other thing. And that just isn't there. So anyway, and we're also listening to the

Ahmed Zidat debate with a Pastor Stanley. I was informed of the name again, which, as I mentioned, was a slaughter.

But we are demonstrating the errors in Zidat's presentation. And so I just want to make sure everyone understands which one's which.

We had one poor young man confused by that last time and was wondering what the

Muslims were doing on with Diane Reams on NPR talking about the New Testament. So it's a little confusing there.

But anyway, we continue on with Airman's NPR interview here. We have to skip over a brief little commercial thing with Bobby here in just a moment.

But she was trying to bring up the issue of the virgin birth at this point in time.

So we pick up with that accounts. And so so what we have here are two different accounts of the of the birth rather than the virgin birth, the virgin birth.

Yes. So there is, of course, in both accounts, Mary is said to have been a virgin.

Some scribes actually tried to emphasize that point by stressing the virginity of Mary in their textual changes they made in the manuscripts, because they the scribes copying these texts believed in the virgin birth and they wanted to emphasize that.

And so they would add it in places where otherwise it's not found. Now, I really, really wish that he would provide some evidence here, a few citations, a reference or two.

I looked at misquoting Jesus. There's nothing about the virgin birth or Mary. So I can't

I can't speculate. I know that we have like Luke 222 in a much, much, much, much later textual variation from like the 15th century or something like that.

But without without references, again, all we just have are these these very glowing.

Oh, well, they believe in this. And so they did this. There's the mind reading again. Since they believe in this, then they stuck it in places that it really wasn't there before and so on and so forth.

And so that's that's exactly what I was talking about. That's that's not how textual criticism is done, at least when when you're not pursuing a particular agnostic agenda in the process.

And I would point out continuing to, I would say, defend your apostasy for the faith.

But anyways, let's continue on here. The book is titled Misquoting Jesus.

The story behind who changed needs to address two concerns, he says, who changed the

Bible and why. Here is an email from Ray in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Your speaker needs to address two concerns, he says. First, does he sharply distinguish between the manuscript evidence and his explanation of the evidence?

All too often, Bible critics confuse the two. The one is playing for all to see the other, simply the opinion of a mere man, however, learned he may be.

Well, it's a very good question. I you know, my students in Chapel Hill, where I have a lot of very conservative students, they take my class on the

New Testament and they find a lot of my interpretations of the text threatening, but they can write them off as interpretations.

When I when I start talking about the material we're discussing, though, they find it very threatening because now I'm not talking about my interpretation.

I'm simply laying out the historical facts. Now, that that may be what he actually believes, but that's not what's going on.

He evidently seems to think that his spin is the historical fact rather than the facts being the facts.

And then his utilization of particular loaded terms and spin then becomes facts.

That's a common problem that I see with with this kind of perspective. But again, you know, as long as he's a scholar, that means, you know, that that he would never spend anything.

Well, that simply isn't the case. He has an agenda. He has a history which he has admitted and he has to give reason for why he is where he is now and why he's doing what he's doing.

And let's let's just be honest with ourselves. This man's not a friend of the Christian faith. He is making his money off of attacking it.

And so he has an agenda. You know, it's sort of like we have in our society today. Only Christians allegedly have agendas and those who attack the

Christian faith are just being good liberals. They're being broad minded, so on and so forth. Well, that's what we have going on here as well.

I'm certain that they would find it threatening, especially if they have not been exposed to a meaningful discussion of the transmission of the

New Testament text and the means by which God did so before they get into his class. I am sure that he has a long line of skulls behind his desk, notches on his gun.

And a lot to answer for someday when he stands before the one who inspired those texts that he, of course, is seeking to cause doubt about.

We have thousands of Greek manuscripts, not to mention thousands of Latin ones. And all of these differ from one another in thousands and hundreds of thousands of ways.

Now, again, oh, that just means we we we can't make heads or tails out of the text of the

New Testament. Anyone who's reading the New Testament knows that's not the case. I just don't know how someone with this man's knowledge can can just spin this so badly on purpose other than to sell books, which is a powerful motivation,

I guess. I mean, if you were to listen to hundreds of thousands of variants, you would think that every single verse you were reading, there would just be no idea of what it originally what it originally meant.

I mean, that every manuscript just must be so different than every other manuscript.

And that isn't the case. That's not true. And he knows it's not true.

And at other times he will say, in fact, in just a moment or two, he will admit, yeah, the vast majority, vast majority, his own words, vast majority of variations are meaningless.

Their their spelling differences, word order differences, clearly simple scribal, vast majority of them are meaningless.

So why in the world then use this kind of language? Why then talk about hundreds of thousands of changes?

It's not a thousand changes. It just it's just amazing to me that this kind of thing is, well,

I guess I shouldn't be amazed. This is the kind of thing NPR would would eat up. And, you know, our society goes, oh, that's great.

That's wonderful. This is wonderful. We don't have to worry about what the Bible says anymore because no one knows what it originally said rather than getting into specifics.

And we get into some specifics here in a moment. We're going to see just how, well, I'll say deceptive this kind of a presentation is.

Again, when you when you use the term hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands.

What he's talking about there is when you have one manuscript and it varies from its exemplar.

All right. Let's say it's exemplar. That is the one that was it was copied from. Let's say we have a situation in the sixth century where you have a scriptorium and you have a person reading the text and then you have, let's say, five scribes.

Copying the text. All right. So you have one exemplar and now you have five copies being made of that exemplar.

And of course, it's going to be it's going to be a long process. This isn't the most enjoyable work in the world. We are not sitting in an air conditioned room next to a guy who wears deodorant.

We don't have nice lights over our heads. We may be doing this by sunlight.

And so the sun angle keeps changing and temperature keeps changing. It may be cold. It may be hot.

We don't have people who get to have LASIK or prescription glasses and so on and so forth.

And you have people who have various levels of hearing. And the guy who's doing the reading might not be the same guy.

You might have one guy who's who's very good in his pacing and his enunciation and so on and so forth.

But you might have another guy reading who isn't at all and is difficult to understand. And it's difficult to know whether he's saying you as in you plural or us because they sound the same.

And his Greek pronunciation isn't good. And you're not having a good day. So you don't even bother to raise your hand and ask him to repeat something.

Blah, blah, blah. So you have one manuscript. And then you have five copies being made.

Now, let's say. Let's say we're copying the Book of Romans, 16 chapters, and in the process of that one transcription of that one manuscript, you end up with in your best scribe makes seven errors.

Let's make it eight. So it's one every two chapters. That's pretty good. I mean, I'd be really good. Most of us couldn't do that.

He was well practiced. Your worst scribe made 32 errors, two per chapter.

Just make it nice and simple that way. And everybody else is in between. All right. Now, when you take those five and let's say an average of one error per chapter in each one of those things and and even by his own admission, the vast majority of these will not in any way, shape or form affect what you're reading.

And obviously, unless a massive error has taken place and there's no checking, there's no going back, there's no second reading, anything like that, no emendation later on.

If there's no checking whatsoever, unless you have a huge error, just just a massive error that would then, of course, stand out in comparison to all the rest of them.

Obviously, if the vast majority mean nothing and you don't have a major error like that, if you read any one of those five manuscripts, are you going to understand what

Paul said in Romans? Yes, you are. But you take all those different you don't just have an average of 16 different differences, you have 16 times five.

You see, and if that one that was being read from came from the same type of situation as that, then you multiply those together and that's how you end up with hundreds of thousands of alleged variations when in point of fact, you're not talking about that kind of massive corruption at all.

I mean, when you sit down with the Nessie -Aland text, you can read entire verses. There's no, absolutely no textual data information provided at all.

There's no variations that are listed at all. And in the vast majority of situations, a variation does not impact the reading of the text one way or the other.

Now, are there? Of course there are. I've written an entire book on the subject. Which is considerably longer than than the

Airmans is discussing those things. There's no question about those things, but that's not what is being presented to people here.

And you're hardly going to be encouraging people to do meaningful textual study when you throw out this kind of of silliness as if hundreds of thousands, no idea.

It's just all this. No, it's not. I mean, if you took this kind of idea, you'd basically have to say we have no idea what anyone said in the past.

Because the New Testament is is the purest document that's come down to us in that period of history.

I mean, I suppose Airmans should say we have we really don't have a clue about Plato or Aristotle or Pliny or Tacitus, we don't have a clue what any of them actually said, because in comparison, the

New Testament, we don't have nearly the same manuscript tradition. We don't have as early manuscripts.

We just might as well throw them out. We have no clue what they were talking about at all. Well, no, he knows we we most definitely do.

It's just he doesn't believe what the New Testament teaches anymore. And so and there are places where scholars don't know what the original text said.

Now, what does that mean? What does that mean? Is he asserting that original readings have been lost?

If he has, then he's wrong, because as he himself knows. The New Testament manuscript tradition demonstrates what's called tenacity.

Once a reading enters into that tradition, then it stays in that tradition. When a variation takes place, it leaves evidence of it having taken place in various telltale ways or sometimes very obvious ways.

For example, when you have a huge change like there's one of the most famous examples is one scribe who just wasn't having a good day.

All right. And you can tell he was copying from a manuscript that had two columns. But he didn't really notice that too well.

And so he he went across the columns as he was copying. And it was in the genealogy of Jesus.

And so, like, God ends up being the son of somebody, the father of someone else. And I mean, it's it's just completely ridiculous.

But you know what? We know it's still there. We found it. It's it's we've identified it.

And there's no question that that was the original. I mean, when you have that kind of change, boom, you obviously, you know, instantly are able to recognize that when it is compared with with the rest of the manuscript tradition.

And so. This kind of this kind of language, it really bothers me to see an area of my special interest in my my special study being used this way, especially because I know, of course, that enemies of faith then will utilize this to, you know, attack the faith.

And it is one area I got it. You know, no one can point a finger at me and say

I haven't tried. You know, I mean, the King James only controversy, if it was aside from its pastoral need to help churches that were.

That were, you know, being attacked by King James only as it was also a real rather obvious attempt to instruct people on the subject of textual criticism and the manuscripts of the

New Testament. And and because I've known for a long time, this is where the enemies of the faith like to attack.

And it's an area that Christians just they need to know more about it so that they can be prepared to deal with it.

Those are facts. You see that those are facts. We just don't know. We don't know what it's where.

Where First Timothy three, 16, perhaps, which is going to be one he's going to bring up here in a moment. Where which one are you saying that there are variants that we have lost the original reading, or are you saying that there are very difficult variants?

There are a small number of very difficult variants where you have four or five different readings and they're very evenly spaced. And what we should really, really do is make sure that everyone has all the information available to them.

But what but to say we don't know, does that simply mean we withhold judgment?

Here are the variants that the manuscripts present to us and here's how they would impact the text.

Is that what he's saying? If that's what he's saying, then why not say it is what I would like to know.

That's that's the important part. But anyways, we we continue on.

Here's his second question. Granted that there are many variations, how many of these are, in fact, errors of any kind?

And how may they have real significance for our understanding of the message of the

New Testament? It's another great question. Most of the most of the changes in the text,

I would say they're all errors because they've changed what the text said. And so there are errors to that extent.

How many of them are significant? Well, the vast majority of them are insignificant. They're spelling differences or they leave out a line or a word.

And so that's not all that important. OK, I hope we heard that. OK, let's make sure that we heard that one, because that sort of really undercuts everything that came before about all these hundreds of thousands of changes, because the vast majority of them are irrelevant to the transmission of the text and the meaning of the text.

And I'm really glad that we have had that conversation, had that settled now. But there are hundreds of changes that actually matter, that change the very meaning of the books that they're in.

Now, there we go. Changes. That's his that that's term he wants to use. Scholars use the term variants because scholars recognize that use term changes communicate something that is in the vast majority of instances not a part that's there.

And that's why Bart Ehrman uses changes so he can sell books. And also so that he can, you know, promote his his agenda.

And so what kind are we talking about? Let's look at some at some examples.

And depending on which manuscripts you trust, the very meaning of the book of the

Gospel of John or the Gospel of Mark or the Book of Hebrews changes depending on which manuscripts you trust.

Really? Wow. So so we have in time so we can take one manuscript and it has one message for the

Gospel of John, but another manuscript has a completely different Gospel, John, a completely different thing. Right. Wrong.

Of course not. No, that's not the case. The only way you could even begin to substantiate again this this extreme lack of care in being accurate in language here on the part of someone who knows what he's talking about.

I mean, he knows he's doing this. There's no one could study the stuff that he studied and not know exactly what he's doing is to say, well, you see, there are important variants.

There are variants at John 118. Well, he wouldn't want to use that one because the the vast majority of scholarly opinion would go against his viewpoint there.

So let's see what other one we might use. Romans 9 5 or Acts 20 28, because he will use this one.

OK, there's there's a there's a variant there. And if you read it one way, then it might mean this.

But if you read this way and that might change the entire book, you mean all these books have like one text that defines their entire message?

Is that what's being said here? I mean. Once again, this is just not the language of of a careful scholar, you know, the conservative that ignores variations, that's not being careful either.

Saying, oh, there's there's no reason to look at the there's no reason look at that their textual stuff, you know, just give me the

King James. OK, we know that's not right. Now we got the other side doing the spin thing and it's the truth in the middle.

You've got to look at the specific texts and it's not just, well, this one manuscript over here, it's going to say one thing.

No, the very fact that you will find. Manuscripts taking different having different readings on both sides of an issue demonstrates that the reason they have variant readings is because of scribal errors, not because the scribe was specifically trying to say,

OK, my manuscript is going to promote this particular theology, my man. I'm going to like the

New World Translation. You imagine if someday someone, you know, started using English printed texts as if they were manuscript witnesses.

And now you've got the New World Translation or you've got Joseph Smith's version or something like that where you do have wholesale changes.

Well, those wholesale changes stand out like a sore thumb when you compare them with the primitive manuscripts themselves.

So, again, it's frustrating to hear this kind of stuff. And so I'd say that's pretty significant. And finally, he says, has any central doctrine of Christian faith been called into question by any of these variations?

Well, yes, the in the 18th century, one of the first scholars to start studying these materials was it was a man in Germany named

Wettstein who ended up losing his teaching post because he pointed out that a number of the changes in the in the oldest manuscripts compromised the teaching of the deity of Christ and the they threatened the doctrine of the

Trinity. And that some of the oldest manuscripts didn't support the traditional views about Jesus as divine.

This this was a dangerous teaching. And as I said, it ended up costing Wettstein his teaching post.

Now, that's that sounds very ominous. And it's, you know,

I have an entire chapter on modern translations and modern texts or more properly ancient texts and the deity of Christ in the

King James only controversy. The story that he just crammed into about 30 seconds there about Wettstein is on pages 112 through 115, 116 of his book.

And I was really interested. OK, what what examples is he going to does he want to give here?

Because when I start thinking about the deity of Christ in ancient manuscripts, I think of John 118. And John 118, which

Ehrman has some odd views on, he's been refuted on them a number of times, but he has some odd views on it. But John 118, the monogamous theos is the most ancient reading and Jesus described there as God.

So in point of fact, the traditional text was not as strong in the deity of Christ there as the ancient text was.

And so I started thinking of manuscripts like P66 and P72 and P46.

Let's see. Well, no, none of those. None of those have any kind of of bias against the deity of Christ in any way, shape or form that that that that doesn't make any sense.

You're not going to find. So which which ones are we talking about here? I mean, First Timothy 316, you have

God's manifest in flesh or he was manifest in the flesh. It's a difference between Haas, theos, it's the nomena sacra.

If you've ever seen my King James Only presentation, I put them up on the screen for you and see the differences are the idea. This is somehow a, quote unquote, change.

It is so much more simple to recognize. It is a scribal issue, not a purposeful change.

To use the term change like that is just absolutely positively, again, grossly biased and prejudicial and so on and so forth.

So I start thinking about others. What what other texts could there be that that would be referenced? Well, so I looked at the.

Looked at the references. Well, first of all, is First Timothy 316. And he mentions

Wettstein examining Codex Alexandrinus and that he feels the original reading of Alexandrinus was

Haas rather than theos. And so that's massively important. Well, yeah, it is a very important textual variant.

There's no question about that. And I think it needs to be examined carefully. And it's a difficult one because there is so little difference between the two readings as far as what they would look like in an unsealed text and and things like that.

But that's what he mentions. Then he mentions the comma, Johannium, first John 5, 7 through 8.

Well, what what is really important about that that had been debated that had been known in the days of Erasmus.

Erasmus had debated that one a hundred and oh, what, about one hundred and thirty years before this point in time.

That's hardly relevant. Then the minor, rather minor variant, in fact, is

Acts 20, 28, which is, as I discussed in the Forgotten Trinity, an issue not only of translation but of text as to whether that is a passage that is specifically referring to the deity of Christ.

And that's all there. That's all he gives. And I'm like, what are you talking about here? You have the strengthening of the witness in John and John 118.

You have all these passages clearly presenting the deity of Christ and a couple of minor passages like that that are are not in any way, shape or form the ground or foundation of the deity of Christ.

This somehow is the best way of demonstrating. Well, yes, sir, the deity of Christ falls on textual critical grounds.

No, it doesn't. That's absurd. Absolutely, positively absurd. I just again,

I maybe maybe, you know, his students don't challenge him or he doesn't allow it or I don't know.

But it's just like, how do you get away with that? I don't I just don't understand. Well, we will continue with that.

And by the way, your phone calls, if you would like at eight seven seven seven five three three three four one eight seven seven seven five three three three four one a little bit more with the airmen and then moving on to Ahmed Ddot as well.

But first, we're going to be taking our mid hour break and we'll be right back right after this.

What is

Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book Chosen but Free, a new cult, secularism, false prophecy scenarios?

No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient and morally repugnant.

In his book, The Potter's Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler. But the Potter's Freedom is much more than just a reply.

It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself.

In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme

Calvinism, defines what the reformed faith actually is and concludes that the gospel preached by the reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture.

The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen but Free. You'll find it in the reformed theology section of our bookstore at AOMin .org.

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Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.

Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.

In their book, The Same Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the

Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including

Genesis, Leviticus and Romans. Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law.

In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for his people.

The Same Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at AOMIN .org.

On a

Thursday afternoon, I want to clarify something that I just said. In Acts 2028,

I think I may have called it a minor variant. It's not a minor variant as far as the split in the information.

In fact, it's a very interesting variant between Church of the Lord and Church of God. It's a minor passage as far as the deity of Christ is concerned.

I've never seen anyone basing some huge edifice, some great foundation of the deity of Christ in Acts 2028.

It just isn't that central to the demonstration. It may be relevant, but you'll see in the section,

The Forgotten Trinity, I went through various places where theos might be used of Christ. And I talked about Acts 2028,

Romans 9, 5, 1 John 5, 20. But these are passages where there's enough question.

You don't just simply say, ah, it's right here. You got to believe it's right here. Or, you know, we'll tie it to a stake.

I suppose there may have been some folks who do that at some point in history. But thankfully, we don't do that today.

And so anyways, if I called it a minor variant, what I meant was the text itself is a minor support in the deity of Christ.

It's actually an interesting variant and all sorts of internal probabilities between, again, it's the same situation you have in 1

Timothy 3 .16. There you have what's called a nominus sacra. That is, there are certain sacred name and other certain words that were used repeatedly in the

New Testament would be abbreviated and a line placed over top of the abbreviation.

And so theos and has would be a theta sigma, and the difference between the two would be only the line over the top and the line in the theta would differentiate from a omicron.

For has, which this doesn't work really well on the dividing line. It's a whole lot easier to do this with a digital projector because I put it up on the screen, you can see it.

Well, the same thing is true here. The difference both of God and of the

Lord, both would be nominus sacra. So both would be two -letter words, a line over top, one -letter difference between the two.

So again, when you hear Ahriman, change, change, change, change communicates purposeful emendation, what we're actually talking about is a changing of one letter and is that more, especially think about copying someone else's handwriting written on papyrus or on leather.

Think about that for a moment. Look at your leather, the leather cover of your Bible. Make that a light brown and now write on it with a quill.

Not with a nice ballpoint pen or a nice gel pen or something, but with a quill.

All right. And all the things that come along with ink and quills.

Now, what else do you have in the surface? You have lines in the surface. The thing about the difference between reading someone else's handwriting and their difference between a circle with a little line in the middle and a line over top and just an open circle.

You see how that might happen? Yeah, so do I. So why do you assume it to be purposeful?

It could go either direction. That's how scholars have discussed it in the past, and they didn't make a whole lot of money selling books for Harper, San Francisco, either.

But can anything good come out of San Francisco is the question these days. Anyway, so I want to clarify that before we continued on here with just a little bit more.

I have so many questions, but we have to go to the phones. Let's go to Charlottesville, Virginia.

Good morning, Fred. You're on the air. Good morning. And thank you for taking my call.

And I'm very, very excited that we can get your show now. I am, too. Thank you so much.

Bart, I had a an experience. I won't call it a religious experience, but a book fell off of a bookshelf about eight, nine years ago, and it was written by Dr.

Barbara Thuring, who is a doctor of theology at the University of Sydney in Australia. And she has written several books on Jesus, the man.

And I'm wondering if you're familiar with her scholarship. I've even attempted to get the

Religious Studies Department at UVA to consider offering it as a class because it is just awesome information.

Are you familiar with Barbara Thuring? Yes, I am. And what do you think of her?

Well, I think Barbara Thuring is not widely respected among scholars, largely because of her somewhat peculiar ideas about the

Dead Sea Scrolls and their relationship to the historical Jesus. The Dead Sea Scrolls actually have nothing to do with the historical

Jesus or with early Christianity. They're Jewish documents. And Barbara Thuring is one of a very, very small group of people who've wanted to try and emphasize the the relationship of the scrolls to Jesus, Jesus personally.

Which you hopefully in hearing that are going, ah, that's relevant to to.

That's right. Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code, because what does he say?

What's going to be on movie screens? Unless maybe someone's actually gotten to maybe fix a couple of these rather really major whoopses like including the

Dead Sea Scrolls as part of the original Christian Gospels. That kind of, you know, maybe they'll get the

Century of Constantine right now. Maybe, maybe some someone wandered by the set and said, ah, you know, you're off a hundred years there.

And they may have fixed that. I don't know. I'm going to be looking very, very, very carefully when that when that comes up.

But maybe, maybe they've fixed that. I don't know. But there is a direct relevance there to something that we have been dealing with.

Thanks for your call, Fred. Here's an email from Kyle in Durham, North Carolina, who says, as your remarks suggest, as does the title of your book, you believe the

Bible was changed, presumably from some pure early form.

But why do we have to think of this as a corruption? Cannot we envision the

Bible as simply a living, changing text? That's a that's an excellent question.

A friend of mine from Birmingham, England, has written a book called The Living Text of the Gospels, in which he actually takes this line where he sees that as scribes change the text, they keep it alive.

And I'm fine with that. I think that I'm fine that most people, though, really want to know what

Paul actually wrote. If they read Galatians, they want to know what Paul said in Galatians, and they don't want to know what a later scribe wanted

Paul to say. And to that extent, for people of that mode, I would say that these would be corruptions of the text.

Well, and I would have to agree with him. Yeah, this living text thing doesn't doesn't work real well.

And so we do have to deal with the issue of textual variation. And obviously, the presuppositions you bring to the text will determine what you what you do with that.

At about 20 minutes before the hour, let's go ahead and move over to again.

I noticed some folks who said, boy, it's hard to understand what Amadida says.

Well, actually, it is. It's not so much the recording as it is his his own speech.

You do get used to it after a while. I've noticed that I understand it better and better as as time goes by.

But when it's really difficult, I try to make sure you understand what he's saying. You may recall on our last program, we were listening to his opening statement where he was going after the text of the

Bible. And he just read from Isaiah and first Kings and and he's now proving that there's plagiarism involved.

And the one of the last things we sort of ran out of time on. Was the difference between the

Muslim view of what verbal inspiration or plenary inspiration or inspiration, so on and so forth, is and what

Christians believe about the same thing. And for the Koran to be verbally inspired, then it has to be

God speaking. It cannot be God speaking through another or or God narrating events in history that become themselves revelation.

It has to be really a very monochromatic, very well,

OK, I'm showing my my bias here, but a very shallow view of inspiration because it cannot allow for what we have in the

Psalter. It cannot allow for Isaiah to be using sources. And for example, he's going to cite

Luke in Luke chapter one saying he interviewed people, he interviewed eyewitnesses. And that means this can't be the word of God.

So God cannot give us the kind of revelation we have in Scripture just simply by definition. Well, just creating a definition like that and then using it to say the

Bible isn't the word of God is obviously to beg the issue and to beg the question. That's not logical argumentation, but that's what we're going to be hearing from Ahmed Didat.

Let's listen to a few minutes of that and then we'll be taking a phone call from Brian down in Savannah, Georgia.

So let's listen to Ahmed Didat first. Gather from the Christian learned men. They tell me, and this the pastor says to the contrary, that the

Bible was not a verbal revelation like we Muslims believe about the

Koran. They believe that the Koran was a verbal revelation. God Almighty tells his messenger who

Allah had said he's got the one and only. So Muhammad says, oh, I love some of God, the eternal, absolute.

This is a lot. So let me tell you that he does not beget and is not begotten. So he said, let me tell you, it was a the

Koran is a verbal revelation. Now, let me just comment just in passing.

I guess that what that means is only Allah can say that and he can't have human beings say things that are the honest.

So I guess he just lacks that level of power control. But as it may, isn't it intriguing?

In listening to this and thinking about what it means in, you know, that means that that helps you to understand why the

Arabic Koran is really the only Koran, because the translation by nature is going to be inferior to that.

So there are there are Muslims who believe the Arabic Koran has always existed. It's always been there.

It's always been there. Now, when he by the way, when he talks about Christian learned men, he's going to quote folks like Hans Kuhn.

So he like his progeny today will utilize really any source, especially sources that would that would laugh at the idea of the

Koran being inspired. But that doesn't seem to cross their thinking. But he'll use any source along those along those lines.

So the Christians do not believe in a verbal revelation. They believe that the Holy Ghost, the

Holy Spirit inspired people, tickled people to write. Tickled and inspired.

There you go. There's a there's a deep sense of accuracy in study. Actually, we only have ourselves to blame for some of that.

In other words, when we don't criticize and separate ourselves from and demonstrate the errors of those who who stand on TBN and say,

God said this to me, then we can understand why someone outside the faith and look at that, think that's Christianity and go, you know what, you all have a really fuzzy doctrine of of inspiration.

Heresy never helps the apologetic task, as we can see in situations like this.

But beyond that, if he were to be accurate, and unfortunately, most evangelicals are inaccurate about this either, the apostles were not inspired.

Scripture is inspired. Now, we we tend to be very inaccurate in our utilization of that term. There's no question about that.

We we tend to talk about, well, under inspiration, the apostle said or the apostle was inspired to say this.

I know it's common usage, but we need to be careful because the problem is we're generally using the term inspired as a synonym for Theanoustos at 1st

Timothy 316, which, by the way, is our memory verse on the blog this week.

And that's never said of men. Men are not

Theanoustos. Scripture is Theanoustos, is God breathing. It's God's breath. It's God breathed.

It's spoken out by God. And that's not men who are God breathed. It is the scripture. It is the result of that action that's more accurately described in Peter as holy men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. See, so we we bring some of these issues upon ourselves because we don't tend.

To be as as accurate as we should be in our use of terminology, so that that's just something to to keep in mind.

But in that case, you can't have word for word reproduction. If somebody tickles you to write about this meeting, you can't reproduce word for word what the other man has written, the other journalist, your wordings will differ, your settings will differ.

This is human. Even if you are inspired to write about this meeting, no two will be identical.

Here, identical, which means that this was stolen in literature.

They call it plagiarism. Somebody has been plagiarizing what was written. This guy here under his own name, he rewrites this whole thing and says, this is mine.

Now you hear what is being asserted here. And by the way, I just saw this is one of the reasons

I like being in channel. One of our channel users just put up a link that I had certainly looked for this, but I've never been able to find it.

A whole mess of Ahmed Ddot MP3s. My goodness, I could ride across the

United States listening to all this. Am I going to be busy now?

Too bad I ordered all those videos. But anyway, this I wonder if anyone, you know,

I might as well fill this out. This would be rather interesting. Does anyone have a recording?

Of the a lot of these are real audios, but that's fine.

I can I can convert them over to to MP3 sends the videos back.

I'll have to see if these are available in that in that format. But does anyone have a recording of the talk that Ddot gave in Australia right before he had a stroke?

Because on his own website says it was on the atonement of Christ. I would I would love to hear that. I would love to hear what he said about the atonement of Christ in in that discussion.

I really, really would like to hear that. I'll have to go through this seems like a huge section of citations here.

Thank you very much for posting that. I'll be looking more at that. And who knows, we may be hearing more of this in the future.

But anyhow, I'm going to go ahead and stop right there for the moment. Maybe we'll get back. It depends on how how the call goes here.

Let's go ahead and talk with Brian. Hi, Brian. How are you doing? Hey, Dr. White. How are you doing? All right. Appreciate your ministry and got a lot from your books.

And I was wanting to know how what you think of the Christians responsibility in the public sector as far as responding to letters to the editor.

I came out of Roman Catholicism, one of eight kids. And my family is very steep, very deep into that.

In fact, I had a brother, my own youngest brother, tell me last week if he was riding home that he was praying the rosary.

And I finally just used to let those comments slide by and just finally said, why would you do that? And of course, knowing now from your books like Mary, another redeemer and the

Roman Catholic controversy, you know what would they mean when they say Mary is the mother of God means a whole lot more than what

I used to even thought it meant. Right. But one of the priests here in town who is real big behind the ecumenical movement and stuff like that writes a letter to the editor talking about the

Immaculate Conception of Mary and the idea that, you know, she was to be because she was to be the mother of Jesus.

He writes, she was saved from sin by Jesus Christ from the moment that she was naturally conceived by her parents.

My question for you is this, when we see stuff like that, should we respond with another letter to the editor talking about the falsehood of that?

Yeah, because most people will see that, of course, if you're Catholic, you say, well, you know, you may not even investigate really where Rome comes up with this.

Right. Like I said, your book, Mary, Another Redeemer, really brought a lot of insight to me looking into this because I have a concern.

I want to I want to see my brothers and sisters come to Christ. Right. Right. Well, you know, I know a lot of folks who do write letters to the editor.

Obviously, the sad thing is that most of the time in in the media in the

United States, Canada, most Western countries, the media is is very, very left leaning.

And so you're going to have a a difficult time getting much accomplished as far as getting there.

Obviously, they have the they have control of the playing field, let's put it that way. And so it has to be handled.

First of all, you have to make sure you have the right motivation in doing it so that emotions can be kept in check.

And also the main reason is so that you can have a calm state of mind, shall we say, so that you can recognize that, well, they're not going to allow me to write a tome.

I'm not going to be able to get four columns in the newspaper explaining all this stuff. And so there are simply some things that are next to impossible to communicate in two or three paragraphs that are fairly short and succinct and well -written and the type of thing that an editor is going to look at and go, yeah,

OK, this this this is this is responsible enough for me to go ahead and put it in.

And so you sort of have to weigh those those factors and go, all right, could I make a pithy, concise comment that would communicate enough that would sort of allow allow individuals to maybe pick up an important piece of truth or or am

I going to be able to direct them to something? Am I going to start a thought process? And knowing that they keep track of who's writing what and who's written to them before, you sort of have to, you know, at times just go, you know what,

I'm not going to be able to I'm not going to be able to address this particular one. You have to let this one pass and look for a better opportunity in the in the future.

You know, if we try to respond to every single thing, you're going to end up, you know, ending your opportunities to do that kind of thing.

So those would be some of the things that I would I would suggest. I don't think there's any any reason why a

Christian should not take advantage of all the freedoms that we are given to be able to do that kind of thing.

Sure. But I think we need to be very careful. I mean, let's face it. We've seen letters in the newspaper that we just roll our eyes and go, man,

I wish he had not written that letter because of the way in which it was stated.

The the, you know, sometimes anger coming out or bigotry or bias or or just ignorance, many, many things like that.

So, you know, I don't know. It really depends on what their guidelines are, how much space you'd have and whether you think the editor is actually going to be fair enough to allow for the expression of other other perspectives.

Right. It's just, yeah, I guess what I want, I want to try to stimulate people to think, right, just to say, hey, maybe maybe

I'll look at this. It's possible if you can if you can address them to some address or direct them to something that would address the issue.

That's just it. I don't know if the guidelines of the particular editor is going to allow you to do that, to give a

URL or anything that's really, really hard to say. So it depends. So it depends.

But I certainly wouldn't shrink back from, you know, if you have the opportunity of saying something to hoping that your response would be one that the the editor would feel, you know, it was worthy of being printed.

Sure. Yeah, I appreciate the answer, sir. OK, thank you very much. God bless. All right. God bless.

Bye bye. Well, you know, I I don't mainly because I don't I don't get the newspaper my

I did for a while, but the wife really didn't like it. And that was many, many years ago. And so we really haven't kept up with it.

So I get most of my my news online these days. I don't even have cable for that matter.

So it's pretty much an online type of situation. So but I do know someone who writes the editor fairly regularly out in the in the

East Valley and reads what they have to say and the opinion columns. And and, you know, that's certainly something that someone can do.

I just really encourage anyone who would think about doing it. To make sure that you put this way, when you read what someone has to say.

And you're immediately struck by it being opposed to Christian faith.

Step back and ask a question, is it possible to read this in another way?

Because some of the most embarrassing things I've seen put out there in the public realm by evangelicals is when we had a hair trigger, we just blew up on something that, you know, totally missed what the actual context of it was or whatever.

We've all done it. I've done it. And you really look silly when you do that, basically.

And doing it with regularity is the problem, I guess. And so I would just I know sometimes it's a time issue, but you've got to get your letter in quickly or it's the whole subject is going to go away.

But if there's possibility of sort of laying it aside, letting some of the feelings subside, coming back at it from another angle, reading it in a different way and going, you know, is it possible that they're saying this or that thing?

And if there isn't, OK, then fine, you know, then go with it. If it's very, very clear, very, very succinct in what it's saying, fine, wonderful.

But just be careful that if you're going to respond to something like that, that you make sure that you you're not responding in an unusual way.

So anyhow, no, no time to go back to to Ddot at this particular point in time because we have less than a minute left on the program next week.

As far as I know, 2006 brings no differences as far as the dividing line is concerned.

We would ask you to remember us, however, our move is coming up, but you'll notice in the blog that I mentioned we're going to be moving our offices.

I would imagine that that may well cause some disruption in starting in February, that time period in there.

I don't know, but it's going to be a lot of work and I hope you will be praying for us, supporting us in that.

Obviously, we'll be in a better position to to do what we need to do with a little more space.

I mean, I was asking Rich earlier what he thought I have in space in my office right now.

And he said about one hundred and seventy five square feet. Yeah, a whole library. That's when I talk about books being up on the shelf and being right above my head.

I am telling the truth. So anyways, we got that coming up. And of course, in February, heading to the

United Kingdom and and the Shabir Ali debate and John Shelby Spong. And my goodness, we have a lot of things going on.

Two thousand six. Make it a safe upcoming weekend. Do not be out late on New Year's Eve, please.

There's lots of weird people out there and there's no reason to be out late. We're even doing it on our New Year's Eve thing on Friday night, watching

Hiding Place. And that way we don't have to worry about drunks on the way home. So anyways, have a safe weekend.

We will see you next week in the dividing line. God bless. We need a new reformation day brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

Box three seven one zero six. Phoenix, Arizona, eight five zero six nine. You can also find us on the

World Wide Web at AOMIN dot org. That's AOMIN dot org, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks.